a chronicle of my coding discoveries

Getting Started in jQuery and the DOM

Last week, I started learning about jQuery and the DOM (Document Object Model). At first, I was really excited. Finally, I could dress up my JavaScript and bring it out in public! But within minutes of delving into the documentation, my eyes glazed over and I became filled with the feeling of hopelessness and dread that has become familiar in my code self-teaching experience. At that point, I closed my laptop and went to bed.

The next morning, though, I sat down at my computer with a new game plan. I’ve found that seeing examples of code (instead of reading about it in generalized terms) is usually the easiest way for me to make sense of new concepts. So–I actually don’t know why it took me so long to think of this–I went to YouTube.

This video (the first in a two-part series) from the DevTips channel was probably best out of all that I watched. It’s professionally made and has a really clever example of showing how an event listener (mouse movement) can be used to create this psychedelic color-changing window.

This DOM manipulation video is less flashy, but demonstrates some basic and very useful techniques. And this video, which is the start of a three part series, got me started in jQuery with some clear and straightforward examples.

For a few triumphant moments, I congratulated myself on conquering this one (admittedly relatively small) beast–I know what jQuery and the DOM are and the very basics of how to use them! Now, back to work…